This is the art I live with every day. These have been hanging in my house for a long time. Most of them for about 15 to 25 years or more. They went with me to North Carolina and hung in the Melrose house. They came back home again. Each one has a story for me, in addition to the stories they tell for their artists. Since I am a painter, I thought it may be interesting to show you the pieces that I own and love.

This painting told me that people are kind and generous despite my preconceived ideas about them. It came as a complete surprise just before my daughter’s birth, and her birthstone is embedded in the piece.

I was sitting in my parked car ready to drive away when this came with a sudden rap on my window that startled me.

He knew I liked it, so he wanted me to have it. What if every gift was so thoughtful?

This painting changed the course of my artistic life. It saw that I was lost, and pointed the way home. Through the pain and loss (which I still feel), and through acceptance to celebration.

A birthday gift. Painted for me. I stare at it day and night.

I have a friend that I spend time with almost every day. We drink coffee and talk about life. The big issues of life, like our identity, our spirituality, our families. We talk about the small issues, too.

Last night I learned that she and I have both invented sparkling, shimmering planets, the stories of which we have told to our children. Hers was made of glass while mine was made of gemstones. Is this a common thing? Do people imagine faceted planets?

Apparently.

She recounted the feeling she had more than 65 years ago, telling her stories to her little boy and girl.

She cried when she told me, and I understood.

Every night, I read to my children at bedtime. We would read the same books over and over and over so that I still have them memorized to this day.

I made up a story about an elephant that wanted to go to daycare, and my daughter begged me to tell it to her every single night… in the characters’ voices, of course.

“WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE SPARKLE SHOES??!!”

Telling stories is important. Not for the information they contain. But for the sound of a voice. A voice that is speaking to you, unhurried, as you drift off to the realm of your dreams.

My mother read to me. She prayed with me, and those bedtimes taught me how to be calm and present for my kids. Once in a while, she would fall asleep in my room, her back against my bed. Those were good nights. My cat, Minnie on my bed… my brother in the bed next to mine, and my mom… present.

My ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. A conversation, a song, beautiful landscape, a dream. Anywhere.

The raw material comes in through various input devices built into my body. My eyes, nose, my ears, my mouth, the nerves in my skin, and also from the amalgamation of that material in my brain’s software.

In addition to the input devices I have already mentioned, parts of my body also serve as output ports. Neurons transmit information in and out. They trigger movement of large and small muscles to manipulate the tools I employ to make my idea tangible in the physical world.

I can transcribe the images in my brain into a form that can be scanned and received into the brain of another human being!

Bits of me then become bits of other people. Without touching, without meeting or even necessarily being alive at the same time, humans implant messages in one another.

We do this through images, spoken or written words, music. Also through touch, and a myriad of other non-verbal ways that we communicate.

Once that information leaves me, and goes into you, it is yours. It is you!

We can’t unsee things or unhear things.

What you do with it is out of my control.

Some people seem to think they can use creativity to escape. That would be like one woven loop in the fabric of my cotton shirt wanting to escape. We are intertwined. We are one thread. There is no escape. There is nothing to escape from, and nowhere else to go.

That’s how I see humanity. The collective unconscious binds us together.

This is not a bleak picture! It’s a wonderful thing to be so connected. And yet we are individuals within the whole of humanity.

My thoughts and my imagination help to make humanity what it is. It is not separate from the rest, no matter how novel, how surprising or bizarre my idea might seem.

So be creative. Be brave. Be kind. To hurt someone else is to hurt yourself.

Bullying doesn’t only happen to kids. It can happen to anyone. Those of us that grew up with low self esteem can be particularly vulnerable when someone in a position of authority disrespects or disregards us. It can be a boss, a romantic partner or anyone that we allow to have more control over our lives than they should. Bullies are not looking out for your best interests. They may say they care for you. They may even say they love you.

They want you to cower and cave. They want to be right, and point out the many ways that you are wrong. They do not have empathy. They say love when they mean control.

I was bullied as a child. When I was in elementary school and Jr. High, I knew I would be bullied to one degree or another every day that I left the safety of the house and got on the school bus.

One day I was being harassed at my locker by a guy named Joe. He wouldn’t let me unlock my locker, and was about to make me late for class. In desperation, I turned and punched him in the face. I unlocked my locker, got my books and went to class, leaving Joe in the hallway crying, his hands over his face.

The image of shock on his freshly belted face is indelibly etched in my memory. I saw tears run down his cheeks before I walked away, and he did not bother me again.

I’m not condoning violence. I was cornered, and acted in self defense.

That experience gave me a clue that I was more powerful than I thought I was.

Even as an adult, I let people bully me. I once quit a good job because I worked with a condescending tyrant who made my life miserable. By giving in, I was agreeing with them… that they were stronger. Better.

I don’t think it is about strength at all. I think it has more to do with confidence. I’ve seen large dogs intimidated by tiny kittens.

I hope you and I can find the confidence to stand firm and say You don’t have permission to treat (or talk to) me like that.

That is something you can state with kindness and respect. Their tyranny is a dead giveaway that they lack confidence, too.

I love shooting portraits, but I don’t see myself as a portrait photographer. I think I am more of a street photographer or photo journalist. I love to capture slices of life. Real life. Not necessarily people who are dressed up, made up, and posed. I shoot in natural light or living room lamps rather than studio lighting.

Several of my friends don’t like the photos I take of them, even though they like my pictures of other people. They seem to have a preconceived idea of what they should look like, or how they think they look best. I shoot you the way I see you.

Remember the first time you heard your own voice on an audio recording? I do. Like many people, I said Do I really sound like that? Actually, I think I said I don’t sound like that. My brothers assured me that I did.

I think it’s that way with photographs. Sometimes you don’t know what you really look like.

For Amber

I had lunch with my goddaughter today. She and I have both struggled with the thought of what to do next… looking for our next big thing. Maybe all people think that way.

Many years ago, I was painting trees. Old growth white pines, in particular. I hung one on my bedroom wall to look at it for a while, without a paintbrush in my hand. One branch looked like the shape of a fish with its mouth open. I noticed it, the way I often notice inadvertent forms in my paintings.

It went to a show, and came home again. I asked it why it didn’t sell.

This unwitting fish in the branch taunted me until I painted it in there. I liked it. And I painted more fish in the branches of trees.

Some of my friends were dubious.

Why?, they asked.

I answered that this area was built on lumber and fishing.

Einstein’s quote came to me again and again… Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.

The personal meaning for me was that I happen to have a wonderful dyslexic brain. Even though I felt out of place in the world for most of my life (like a fish in a tree), there was a tremendous gift in it. I wasn’t stupid, as I had believed. I was just different.

Over the next several years, I became known as the guy who paints fish in trees. My next big thing. But I didn’t plan it. It just sort of happened.

I think it’s the trying to come up with our next big thing that keeps us from finding it. If we just do what we do, our next big thing will come out. It will find us.

And so when my paintbrushes get fidgety, I pick them up and see what they have to say. When I pick up the moving pen, I make sense of what is in my brain and my fingers.

I begin to analyze myself in a loving, non judgmental way. I sort out the noodles in my head one by one and make sense of them.

I believe that the purpose of art is to express what it means to be a human being. To give form to those thoughts that make us different than a chicken or a cat. And different from each other, too.

I don’t worry about writer’s block, or painter’s block. If I’m not painting, then my mind is digesting something. Just as with our guts, anything that goes in, will eventually come out again. Transformed. Unrecognizable.

So trust yourself. Trust your gut, and your fingers. Your next big thing will manifest itself.

Fall Colors. 10″ x 13″, acrylic on illustration board

I sometimes take the gondola to work. I float over an expanse of maple trees, and look down on the Poplar River. In the fall, the hillsides turn red until brown takes over. The color doesn’t last long, and I love seeing them at their peak as I ascend the mountain.

pysy poissa nurmikolta

The thing that distinguishes me from other artists in my genre is that I can do something nobody else can do. I can paint from my perspective.

I watched a video today where a guy went to Giverny and made a tutorial on Monet’s palate and technique. He did a beautiful painting in the style of Monet. I loved watching the process, and the beautiful picture that resulted. But it’s not a Monet.

I live with the intent to send a message, so yes, I paint with the intent to send a message. Many messages. If I want to tell people to stay off of my lawn, I’d probably write the words “KEEP OFF THE GRASS.” That’s pretty direct. When I’m painting, the messages are not really like that. They require some participation from the viewer. They are not directives. My goal is to connect. To communicate nonverbally. To validate and encourage.

The message?

You matter. What you feel matters. Your joys and your sorrows matter. As I said, you have a unique perspective that only you can communicate. But we all feel happy and sad. We all have strengths and limitations. So your unique experience will resonate with someone else.

We’re just enough alike as humans to understand, and just enough different to be interesting. Or inspiring.

You don’t have to try to be unique. You are already unique.

A dear friend said to me the other day “I’m nothing”.

I was shocked. Not only is she unique, she’s one of the most interesting people I know. I can’t understand how she doesn’t see it. If only she could see herself the way I see her!

I learn about myself when I paint. I’ve often said that painting is meditative for me. It is. Time seems to stop, and while my hand applies paint to a canvas, the fingers of my mind rifle through the file cabinets in my brain. With no effort… no intention, details are pulled from the folders, and I remember that I know something I haven’t accessed for decades.

Sometimes people criticize my art because they don’t understand it. I mean they don’t understand the motivation behind it. Not all art is pretty. It can be ugly and poignant. It can be ugly and beautiful at the same time!

Sometimes they criticize my art in a constructive way that helps me to improve it, and that is a wonderful thing.

Sometimes I criticize my own artwork, or just paint over it.

And sometimes I am hurt by the criticism.

But nothing is going to appeal to everyone. So that’s just something I have to accept. One person criticizes a painting, then another person buys it.

To put your work out there is to invite criticism.

I dip my ladle into the collective unconscious and I bring up something that we share. All of us. The creative impulse that makes a painting, kind of freezes that moment in time. The oil pastel by Anne Cervenka that hangs on my wall, Musa’s painting that hangs over my bed, my painting on your wall. The buried mosaics of Pompeii, and ancient petroglyphs hold messages for any viewer with eyes to see. An expression of beauty, longing, what it means to be human. It doesn’t need interpretation or justification, but those discussions can be a lot of fun and enlighten the conscious mind.